NAMM: A Mad Professor of the Stompbox Goes Open Source

ANAHEIM, California — The Willy Wonka of guitar pedal builders is giving away the keys to his kingdom.

Zachary Vex, the mastermind behind the handcrafted and hand-painted Z.Vex line of boutique guitar effect pedals, has decided to release his designs to the public. His newest device, a new pedal called the Inventobox, allows anyone to hack his creations however they choose.

Z.Vex pedals are coveted by collectors for their mystique and funky vibe and as much as their squealing, crunchy and sometimes alien-sounding tones. They run the gamut from fuzz and distortion to wah-wahs and ring modulators. The pedals, with their sparkling, brightly painted cases and bizarre names, are considered high-end curios — they cost between $250 and $500 each.

Even though Vex’s pedal designs win accolades from guitar gods like Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis and My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields, some customers aren’t totally satisfied with what they get.

“Some people who buy the Fuzz Factory find it too bright,” Vex says, referring to his most popular model, a fuzz pedal for the guitar. “So, I wanted to give them an opportunity to open it up and do whatever they want to it.”

Vex is debuting the hacker-friendly Inventobox here at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show, the industry’s premiere tradeshow where all the latest gear is trotted out.

The Inventobox will be out in April. It’s basically a DIY hacking kit that lets intrepid Z.Vex fans mess around with his designs, altering the circuits and creating their own variations on his pedals. $400 gets you the Inventobox kit that contains a pedal with a blank circuit board, a set of modules that reproduce three signature Z.Vex sounds — the Fuzz Factory, the Super Hard-On and his Marshall-style tone stack — plus all the wires, tools and spare parts needed to put them together. There’s also a $300 version that comes without the modules so users can build their own circuits.

Pedal enthusiasts are known tinkerers. They gather online at sites like DIYStompboxes and Build Your Own Clone to trade schematics and debate over the finer points of stompbox design.

You can buy a DIY pedal kit for around $80, so at $300, the Z.Vex Inventobox may seem a little rich. But you get a full 16 knobs to twiddle, plus a peek inside the mind of one of the acknowledged masters of high-end stopboxes.

Vex envisions hackers will use the Inventobox, which ships in April, both for tweaking his designs and for developing their own pedals. The modules can be chained together, so people can layer multiple tone circuits on top of one another inside a single pedal.

The Inventobox itself is modular. Multiple units of the 16-knob boxes can be strung together to create pedals with 32, 48 or 64 knobs — or even more.

It also has a built-in work light and a set of braces that prop up the circuit board so you can move the wires around and still be able to switch the pedal on and off.

At some point, Vex’s explanation of everything the Inventobox is capable of went over our heads like a post-graduate Calculus lecture. Rest assured, though, it’s a pedal hacker’s dream come true.

Vex says he intends to eventually publish each of his designs for free on the internet, giving away the schematics and the instructions on how to assemble the circuits for every last one of his signature pedals. He is also creating an iPhone app that will let you purchase new pedal modules as they become available and view the published schematics.

“I’m going to be giving away all my secrets,” he says. “People are already hacking my pedals anyway, posting my designs on the various forums. So, I don’t care what they do to them.”